Aaron, these are terrible stories I've read here. Last month I was downloading what I thought was a legal adult movie and when I previewed it halfway through I saw it was kp. Needless to say I deleted it but everything I've read here has me extremely scared and paranoid. I keep hearing the only way to truly rid something from your hd is to destroy the drive itself. I was in the market for a new computer anyway and from all I've read I'm tempted to just destroy this one and go ahead and get a new one. And thoughts would be appreciated.

A guy who accidentally halfway downloads something dodgy and then deletes the scraps is
certainly not guilty of anything. Since your disk is already active and full of data a defrag will be
enough to finish off the last bits of it.

Thanks for the quick response Aaron. I'm not the most computer savy person in the world, is a defrag the same thing as reformatting?

No. It's in the tools right beside the one to check the disk for errors. All it does is reassemble
scattered file sectors so each one is quick and easy to read or copy. They tend to get scattered a
bit in normal operations, and defragmenting them will restore disk performance.

A side benefit is that most or all of the empty sectors that might have held remnants of deleted
files are overwritten with other files during the defrag.

Aaron, in his self inflating importance, has again failed to give proper information on this subject....probably because he knows nothing about how things really work...

defragmentation will indeed speed up performance and overwrite some areas of your HDD...but not all...even if you defragment and then completely fill up your drive with data, there will still be possible areas where past data is accessible (even by free programs)...temp files, page files, etc....

about the only thing he has gotten right is that it is 'expensive' to truly retrieve data (and even getting that 'straight' answer was hard)....

for the truly worried I suggest totally wiping your HDD....nuke your HDD

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So Long and Thanks for All the Files
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Thank you peerless and Aaron for your input. I'll have to get around trying that nuke thing. This thing has had me so stressed out and sleepless recently. I feel like the only way to make sure things don't turn bad is to go to the authorities and tell them what happened, but I fear they won't believe me. Is there any way to anonymously ask for advice from the authorities on this matter?

I personally stay away from all filesharing, newsgroups, and any other unsafe house of porn. I don't know how many of the cases where people in this thread who got in trouble are actually an accident or they are just lieing to themselves, but I would not take the chance. Through a combination of the justice systems and general publics ignorance of technology and incredibly harsh laws for mere possession, and then with filesharing it becomes 'promotion' as well, it's simply to risky to go to those places for good ol' legal pornography.

This article should rightly scare the pants of you if you downloaded anything like that; these guys are in the worse possible position. It's impossible to tell who might be a victim of circumstance and who has a major problem with this kind of stuff because they lump them all together and call them 'vile, disgusting deviants'. Thanks to recent Florida law changes by politicians looking for easy targets, these guys are facing the same kind of sentences murderers face.

19 Arrested in Child Porn Bust | TheLedger.com

One of the accused-
'Mitchell Parker, 22, of Lakeland said he didn't do it.

"I'll say one thing, don't ever get Bearshare or Limewire," he said, denying that he ever downloaded the illegal material. "I am disgusted. I wish I was in a battery acid pool right now." '

Oh my god. Guys that article has me truly terrified, I fee like just crying. Should I just go to the authorities?

Sorry brother, did not mean to terrify you. That sheriff in the article is especially into that kind of crime, he's kinda creepy actually when you here him talk. If you just downloaded half of something and then deleted it I really don't think you have anything to worry about with most professional law enforcement. Despite what they could possibly get you for if your hard drive was not clean, they would see the incident as a very non-intentional one based on that. And the fact is that if you have not had anyone knock on your door yet, very slim chance that you are ever going to. Real federal law enforcement is going to be looking for regular activity and then move in directly after a download or an exchange of some kind so they know they have current, real evidence; not to waste their time with an old half-event like yours. They want to catch people who are actually doing something wrong. Follow the good advice presented to you here, please stay clear of dangerous activity but please have peace of mind also my friend. You are going to be fine.

As I posted this morning ( The post was deleted by mistake, right? ),
There's no point in contacting the authorities now because you have no evidence to
offer them and they cannot do anything. In fact, since you deleted it they just
might decide to seize your computer anyway just to cover their own sorry asses.

P2P is not a good source for tips anyway. The police pretty much have to patrol P2P
directly because then they can save evidence [such as IP addresses plus hash plus
exact time all together] as they find them and can then get warrants right away.
Working from a tip, they would have no choice but to go to the P2P network and
retrace your steps in hopes that they may find the bad file again. Since a tip is just
hearsay, they cannot go directly to a warrant and the chaotic nature of gnutella
means they might not be able to find it even if your tip is detailed and accurate.

As for wiping away traces of that one you almost downloaded, a defrag will be
good enough because your disk is already carrying a lot of data and defragmenting
is likely to wipe all the free sectors which once held the recently deleted file. You
should also be able to wipe free space with that nuker program, if it's anything like
the other good erasers you can get for free. That should be much more than
enough security for you.